


Watching The Dying

by thealphagate_archivist



Category: Stargate SG-1
Genre: Angst, Drabble
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-01-05
Updated: 2009-01-05
Packaged: 2019-02-02 01:21:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 450
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12716859
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thealphagate_archivist/pseuds/thealphagate_archivist
Summary: View from ICU - Daniels POV.  Just a short Drabble.





	Watching The Dying

**Author's Note:**

> Note from the archivists: this story was originally archived at [The Alpha Gate](https://fanlore.org/wiki/The_Alpha_Gate), a Stargate SG-1 archive, which began migration to the AO3 in 2017 when its hosting software, eFiction, was no longer receiving support. To preserve the archive, we began manually importing its works to the AO3 as an Open Doors-approved project in November 2017. We e-mailed all creators about the move and posted announcements, but may not have reached everyone. If you are this creator and it hasn't transferred to your AO3 account, please contact us using the e-mail address on [The Alpha Gate collection profile](https://archiveofourown.org/collections/thealphagate).

Watching Dying

Daniel POV

I hate hospitals. I hate everything about them, the smell, the squeaky floors, the over cheerful nurses, the gum chewing porters - everything.

I hate the fact that this hosptial, this ward has been 'home' for the last month. I lie in my bed and watch the world go past as if I no longer belong anymore. My room is ten flights up and the people below realy do look like ants to me.

I hate feeling so ill, so ill that I am struggling to know what is real anymore, struggling to know if it is day or night, breakfast or lunchtime - not that makes any difference, I can't rememmber the last time I ate real food. My 'fish and chips', as my critical care nurse calls my intravenous food, drips slowly out of 'one' of the bags of fluid hanging on the stainless steel pole next to my bed. Funny, it looks just like a hat stand to me. These fluids are keeping me alive, drugs and food calabrated, flowing, feeding me - sustaining my weak, exhusted body.

I can't talk anymore, communication is down to pointing to letters on a graph now, the ability to talk went after they took me off the intubator and inserted the trachy tube, the ability to write went as the oxygen pumped into my lungs muddled my brain and stole my clarity.

So. I sit in this chair, looking longingly at my bed as the act of staying upright is getting harder and harder. I know that need to keep in this position to fight the infection raging in both lungs but in bed I can close my eyes and shut out the rest of the Intensive Care Unit.

"I'll turn the volume up for you Daniel"

I nodd slowly at Nikki. Today is Nikki day. Each day a new nurse. Each nurse so different yet the treatment is the same. The fifteen minute checks, the physio to remove the 'gunk' produced by the Pnuemonia, the changing of the bed, the bed bath, being so ill that a stranger has to shave you and clean your teeth for you is degrading and unhuman.

The noise of the television drowns out the noise of the dying. The lady next to me calls out in her delerium. The young woman who had not left her husband for four days sobs at his bedside. The waste of such a young life as he slips slowly away - the Malaria has taken him now and soon a new person will take his place in the end bed and I will watch someone else come and go.

This is my existence now - watching the dying.


End file.
